I dropped by the University Village Microsoft store in Seattle today to check out the 2017 Surface Pro. The new Pro is a wonderful machine when you feel it. The smooth edges make a difference. The Alcantara keyboard is nice and smooth too. One aspect that surprised me was that the store didn’t have the new 4096 sensitivity-level tilt-enabled pens to show off. Fortunately, the old SP4 pen worked just fine and seemed more responsive on the 2017 Pro compared to my SP4.

The well-informed sales staff explained all the features and allowed me to shoot some photos. I whipped out my SP3, SP4 and a few sample VESA docking stations hot off the 3D-printer and stacked them up. A bunch of customers asked what they were and where to get them. So I dove into my pitch about ergonomics and usability. Good practice for me since I am not a business/sales guy and more of a nerdy engineer type – I did remember to hand out my business cards though.

My key discovery was that all the ports and buttons are in the spots so all accessories like the open source VESA Ergonomic docking solutions work right out of the box. The old clamping-style docks worked too:

From top to bottom: SP3, SP4, 2017 Surface Pro

Here are some shots of the dxdiags of my SP4 and the store’s brand new Surface Pro. Why? Because I’m a big graphics nerd:

2017 Surface Pro dxdiag

SP4 dxdiag

And here is a shot showing how far down the new Surface tilts back compared to the SP3/SP4. I’m not sure how much I’d use this feature, but I know some folks will like those ten extra degrees of tilt:

Ready, set, tilt!

The sales staff wanted me to pre-order a new Surface Pro, but I declined. I have way too many devices already – anybody want to buy the SP3 (Core-i5/128GB/4GB) I won at the Microsoft Hackathon?